by Christie Yeung
Some people began to pay attention to the country of Ukraine when Russia started an invasion in 2022. However, historical disputes ran long before.
Despite Ukraine first declaring its independence in 1918, the then Soviet Union took control of the region again shortly after.
It was not until 1991 that Ukraine reclaimed its independence to this day.
Although Ukraine has only been an independent state in the 20th century, the history of the region dates back to the first millennium B.C.
But Ukrainian culture was suppressed during the former Soviet Union’s control as well as World War II. Hence, some Ukrainian traditions could be hard to practice and retain.
One of which is the making of pysanka – the Ukrainian Easter egg – patterns were drew on the egg with beeswax and dyed, repeated until the desired pattern and color was reached.
Olenka Kleban, an artist who had taught pysanka classes, said that many people from Ukraine made their first pysanka when they immigrated to the U.S. because Ukrainian cultures were oppressed there.
“Ukrainians have not been able to be Ukrainian and Ukraine for a long time,” Kleban said.
Kleban is an award-winning artist who attended Ontario College of Art and Design University in Canada and lived in Toronto before settling in the U.S. in 2019.
Kleban's maternal grandfather fled Ukraine and came to the U.S. after World War II.
“I think he was in Austria or Germany when the war ended, and there was a Soviet truck that came to collect citizens of the Soviet Union to take them back home,” she said. “My grandfather and his friend knew ‘If we got in the truck, they were just going to shoot us, they're not taking us home.’”
That was how Kleban’s family started to be Ukrainians – being away from Ukraine.
Making pysanky is one of the traditions that Kleban’s family practices. She has been making pysanka for as long as she can remember.
Throughout the years that she has been teaching pysanky workshops, she said that there are always people interested in making them, whether it is in Toronto or in San Diego, Ukrainians or not.
Then, at some point during teaching these workshops, she thought about making and using natural dyes.
Even though aniline dyes are more convenient, she thinks natural dyes bring her closer to her Ukrainian roots and once she started using natural dyes, it was hard for her to go back to using aniline dyes.
“It's just been really satisfying. This process of making dyes,” she said. “I'm not trying to replicate the past … but your mind starts to wander or make assumptions, ‘This is what they must have done or this is what it must have felt like.”
Kleban used the process of making natural dyes to connect to Ukrainian history.
“I also just find myself wondering about what are the colors that would have been in the villages where my families from,” she said.
“I'm OK with the eggs breaking,” Kleban said as she saw a crack on a pysanka that her 1-year-old son played with. “I think that's part of life. I think when these pysanky break, it's a moment where we can see what kind of happen in our own life. People we know and everything we know, plants everything, everything dies.”
However, it also provides a reason to create another pysanka to tell a new story.
Credits:
Christie Yeung